The last movie I won tickets for was Snow Angels, a tale of a relationship gone wrong, set against a coming of age story.  Bleak, but strong performances by Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell and the two people who played the teenagers.

Frozen River is about a single mother who gets drawn into smuggling humans across a Mowhawk reservation that exists on both the Quebec and New York State sides of the border.   It’s been getting great reviews and was named Best Drama at Sundance.  These are the type of movies I enter -  the ones for previews of crap like The Mummy:  Tomb of the Dragon Emperor I usually shy away from.  Plus fewer people enter these independent movie contests, so your chance of winning is higher.

The bummer-side of this is that my movie going friend is in Winnipeg right now.   Time to start flogging a free movie pass to people who normally don’t see stuff like this.

“… public discussion of global warming is befogged by contrarians, whose opinions are given a megaphone by special interests that benefit by keeping the public confused. Some of the contrarians were once scientists, but now they behave, at least on the topic of global warming, as lawyers defending a client. Their aim is to present a case as effectively as possible, citing only evidence that supports their client, and making the story appear as favorable as possible to their client. The best, the most articulate, are sought out by special interests, and even by much of the media, because the media likes to have “balance” in its coverage of most topics – and especially this topic because special interests have influence on the media.

The barrage of e-mails that I have received from the public highlights another aspect of the global warming story: it is now very political. The people sending these messages are not generally scientists, even though in many cases they parrot “scientific” statements of contrarians. In their opinion these matters should be discussed in you-tube “debates” between scientists and contrarians. My guess is that scientists may not fare very well in such a format.”

–James Hansen, head of NASA Goddar Institute for Space Studies

DeSmogBlog | Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science.

They do offer a service where you can let them know you have dropped a movie back in the mail and then they will try to get a movie off your list ready to ship as soon as they can confirm the movie has been returned.   I imagine this would shave a few days off.   Still, 5 day delivery for a movie is not that impressive given you can rent a movie off of iTunes for less and 3 rentals would cost about the same.  The problem with the company seems to be that it’s another Ontario based business and everything has to come from there.   My gods, Amazon shipped me a book from Ontario on Friday and it arrived Monday, so I am not sure what zip.ca’s problem is.   I suspect that their online estimate is generous.  If this movie is not here by Wednesday,  they probably sent it via bike courier or hitchhiker.

And what did I rent?     War of the Worlds - the Tom Cruise edition.   I missed a lot of big budget movies there and some of them I never saw, but had always wanted to.   Syriana, Serenity,  The New World, A History of Violence, and Wolf Creek were some of the movies I caught that year that were actually good.   Episode III put me off big budget movies so harshly though, that I distrusted almost anything that came out of Hollywood.

Still,

from brunching.com

The strangest part of the dream was that before I arrived at the event, ads promoting the movie appeared. Now what was strange about the ads were that, in this universe or future or whatever, people projected 2d holographic ads in front of their faces. I guess it was the last place advertising had finally travelled. But the ads for the movie were pink versions of the movie poster, which was odd given that the movie poster was mostly red and black.

I don’t remember anything in detail about the movie itself. There was the building that the room I had been in, but it was populated by round bodied creatures with no head, just a round body with eyes. There was something about this place that was supposed to be paradise and there was quest by two young women trying to find it and unlock it’s secrets.

One odd detail about the room i was in that I just rememberd - one of the tiled walls was this pale blue / turquoise and it had a pattern on it. What was unusual was that the pattern was drawn in chalk and while an effort was made to make them all look the same, there were visual differences, including a tile where it looked like it had been wiped clean and redone - but there was a layer of chalk residue left over.

What was the movie called? Heck if I know.